Tuesday, November 08, 2011

PERCEPTION AND LANGUAGE

Guy Deutscher has written the book: Through the language glass. Why the world looks different in other languages, in which he describes the interactions between language-perception. Deutscher tells that: 1) In 2002, the newspaper Lloyd's List changed the nautical (ship), pronoun : she by it, trying to change the thinking set established by previous generations for whom British ships deployed feminine grace. A logic that gave pine tree masculinity and femininity to the palm. The book shows how our mother language define and limit our thinking and that in some instances shape the way we see the world. Deutscher adds that: 2) William Gladstone speculated on the inability of ancient Greeks to see colors, noting that Homer called the greek sea :dark-purple instead of blue. Gladstone, published in 1849 a chapter about perceptions of Homer and his use of colors. According to Deutscher, these perceptions affected the development of at least 3 academic disciplines for many years. According to Gladstone, the ancient Greeks saw the world like black and white, a hypothesis that could be tested by studying some today ancient cultures. Perhaps certain perceptions of particular ethnic groups directed their language regarding the colors. Maybe something related to local environmental necessarily formed the tribal language.